“Thanks, farm boy.” He grinned and gestured at my clothing. “Abi, can you believe this?”
Chuckling, I did a little twirl. I was wearing sneakers, dusty jeans, and a T-shirt. I might’ve also been wearing a BCR branded, backward ballcap.
“Yes I can. He’s been on a vacation,” she said dryly as she came to give me a quick hug. “Good to see you, boss.”
“You too, Abi. I hope this one behaved?”
She grinned. “Most of the time I didn’t even know he was there.” As no-nonsense as she could be, she had a wicked sense of humor and she really cared about Wren like a brother. For a woman who only came up to my collar bones, she was also scary as fuck when the situation called for it.
“The way we prefer it.” I nodded solemnly. It was an old joke of the immediate team.
Wren rolled his eyes, grabbed his guitar case and didn’t even attempt to take his bag, knowing I’d swipe it anyway. Abi was still working, so she scanned the area as I grabbed her bag, too, and followed Wren to the SUV.
We were on our way to the ranch in no time.
“Do you two want to grab anything from a drive thru somewhere?” I asked as we got away from the airport area.
“A coffee would be great,” Wren said.
“Abi?” I looked at her in the rearview mirror.
“Sure, let me find a place on the way.”
“Thanks.”
We grabbed coffee and a few treats from a local café and then settled in for the drive. It was only an hour and a half, but I knew Wren was ready to be off his ass and moving around.
I could sense his quiet agitation the closer we got to Blue Creek Ranch. I hated that he was feeling this way, but it couldn’t be helped. Not when Bodhi hadn’t been honest with him about being back home.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shield my friend from this pain. I also couldn’t punch Bodhi as much as I wanted to dothat.
We chatted a bit as I drove, mostly about his songs he’d finished and which ones he still wanted to fiddle with more, what Abi had done while on her “working vacation” and such.
Too soon, I turned into the long ass driveway. Wren took a deep breath and held it in, then exhaled long and slow. It was a centering thing, and I offered my hand to him, which he took.
None of us talked, because we didn’t need to. We all knew he was nervous but also glad to be home. Blue Creek Ranch was more of a home to him than the property next door where he’d grown up. Sometimes Wren referred to the ranch as home when talking about it and didn’t even realize he was doing it.
He had a nice apartment in Nashville but with all the touring, he rarely stayed there. I wasn’t even sure if he truly liked the place, but I had a room there and that was my home, too. We cohabitated easily, and if we’d had any sort of romantic chemistry, we would’ve jumped on that bandwagon ages ago.
Sadly, we didn’t, and he’d forever be in love with Bodhi who probably had no idea about his best friend’s feelings or at least he didn’t know what to do with them.
“You can do this,” I told Wren, squeezing his hand as the donkey alarm went off.
“What the hell is that?” Abigail asked, sounding spooked.
Wren chuckled. “That’s Juanpablo. He’s the guard donkey.”
I stopped at the gate to put my code in the box, then drove through.
“Fancy,” Wren teased.
Rolling my eyes, I gestured toward the road to the Event Barn that snaked off in the distance. “There’s another one for the barn.”
Wren cleared his throat, then asked, “Did you, uh, did you put one in for Bodhi’s side?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t need one over there. It’s so far and not really connected to the ranch proper.”
“I feel like we’re approaching the living alarm system,” Abi stated dryly, because the braying was getting louder.
